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Staying on Top When Your World's Upside Down

Live into your potential

“One of the central troubles that human beings fear is the waste of their potential. Again and again the sadness that people long to share with their friends or counselors is a sense that we’re going nowhere.”John Carmody: How to Handle Trouble

If your answer to the question “What would you do if every job paid the same and had the same social status?” is different than what you are doing now, you won’t magically make the transition to that work tomorrow unless you start planning for it today.

But there are things you can do. You can start now taking classes, saving money, networking with people, and taking other steps to build a bridge from where you are to where you would like to be. My father, Joe Tye Jr. (yes, I am the third), was a dedicated career officer in the U.S. Air Force. But he was also a born artist. Evenings and weekends he could be found at his easel honing his craft. By the time he retired, he was good enough that he could launch a second career as a professional artist.

And you can start now finding ways to bring elements of your ideal state into your current reality. I once met a nurse who loved writing poetry. She knew should couldn’t make a living as a poet, but she could write poems for her patients. She said it was often the case that when patients called her a wonderful caregiver, they were referring more to the poems she wrote for them than for the nursing care she gave them.